My name is Karla Zimmerman. For more than 20 years I've been eating, drinking and playing in Chicago and around -- and writing about it for publishers like Lonely Planet, the BBC and Sutro Media. Looking for pie, beer or something oddball in the region? This blog's for you.

Wednesday, December 31, 2014

It's January in Chicago, and you know what that means:
wintry balls-out cold, of course. But it's also the month when Buddy Guy gives
blues lessons.

Every Thursday through Sunday, Buddy shreds the stage at his
downtown club. He does it each January. Tickets sell out fast, because Buddy is
the last real bluesman left, and at age 78, who knows how much longer he'll be
bending strings (he bends his really, really hard, incidentally - just ask his guitar tech).

Chicago blues is its own genre, what happened when Delta axe-men
like Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley and Howlin' Wolf plugged in their amps. Their
sick licks and electric sound paved the way for rock 'n roll, influencing the Rolling
Stones, among many others. Their Chicago story plays out at the old Chess Records site.

Buddy is the last link to the old timers. He was a session
guitarist at Chess and backed Muddy and Howlin' Wolf. He might tell the story
during his January residency, and you'll be close enough to hear it, since the
room only holds 550 people. He might also mention how Leonard Chess slammed him
as just making noise, or that pre-fame Eric Clapton used to sleep in a van to
come see Guy play when he toured England.

So Chicago in January does have a hot spot. While you're in the minor-key
groove, why swing by Muddy Waters' home? And later in 2015 road trip to St
Louis for the opening of the new National Blues Museum. Buddy will certainly be
there.

Monday, November 24, 2014

It is jarring the first time you see a dachshund lower its haunches and poo right next to a tombstone. Some people say it's disrespectful. Others say the dogs saved Washington, DC's Congressional Cemetery.

Founded in 1807, the burial ground had become a forlorn place of crack deals and toppled monuments by the 1990s. But then a group of locals had an idea: turn the graveyard into a members-only dog park, and use the fees to restore the site.

It's now a lovely spot to ramble, and the cemetery has done a fab job documenting the dead. Pick up maps at the entrance to find famed civil rights heroes, global explorers, beer brewers, War of 1812 officers, and loads of other people you should know. Favorite spirits to seek out:

* Mathew Brady: The Civil War photographer is known as the father of photojournalism. He took the picture of Lincoln that's now on the $5 bill.

* Belva Lockwood: She ran for US president in 1884 as the Equal Rights Party's candidate. Yes, she was aware women didn't have voting rights at the time. She still got 4000 votes.

* J Edgar Hoover: The infamous FBI director has a grave that's surrounded by a fence and faces DC's jail.

Just watch out for loping black labs, stick-chasing Yorkies and other members of the K9 Corps patrolling the stony rows. Incidentally, it's a year-long waiting list to join the pack.

3. London, England: Have a "hirsute appendage of the upper lip, with graspable extremities"? That's the qualification for membership in the Handlebar Club. Join the gents achieving mustache excellence at monthly meetings in a Marylebone pub.

4. Trondheim, Norway: Epic mustache history here. It's Norway's Viking capital - the very dudes who originated badass whiskers. It's headquarters of the Norwegian Mustache Club. And Trondheim has twice held the World Championships.

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Everyone goes to gape at Van Gogh and ogle Rembrandt. But where are the neck violins and fluorescent rabbits? The bong displays and erotic music boxes? Amsterdam has a sublime assortment of oddball museums.

1. Kattenkabinet: Art devoted to cats – including works by Picasso and Rembrandt – hangs in this creaky old canal house.

2. Tassenmuseum Hendrikje: The Museum of Handbags and Purses shows arm candy throughout the ages, with lots of sparkling celebrity clutches.

4. National Zoo: Zombie pets will lip-smack at the pickled brains, from pygmy hippos to blue whales, white-tailed deer to red foxes.

5. Living Dead Museum: This one's for reanimated corpses with a sense of humor. It's set in the house where Night of the Living Dead was filmed and is stuffed with rotting legs, eyeball-less faces and other movie props.

3. Cleveland Flea: The city's hipsters unite one Sunday per month from May through October for a crafty street market. The group also hosts underground dinners to which you are invited, LeBron, as well as DIY classes where you can learn to make your own craft cocktails with habanero-flavored salt.

4. Cleveland Museum of Art: Fresh off a whopping expansion, this place will blow your mind with rock star works from Impressionists, Picasso and surrealists. Bring your mobile device, because the museum makes sweet use of digital technology.

5. Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland: MOCA is where you can get your fix of Belgian video artists and feminist performance artists, LeBron. If nothing else, gape at the shiny new building of geometric black steel.

Saturday, June 28, 2014

If you're driving through Cincinnati, Ohio, and you pass an old parachute factory with a giant genie beckoning out front, stop. It's the American Sign Museum, chock full of flashing neon beacons that will sear your retinas. Vintage drive-in marquees, the Frisch’s Big Boy and Charo's Vegas billboard ("The Can-Can goes Cuchi Cuchi") are among the cache of nostalgic novelties.

The museum was born from one man's passion and collection of salvaged signs. A neon-making shop onsite guarantees a future for the industry.

Elvis Presley played his last-ever concert in Indy. It happened 37 years ago almost to the day, on June 26, 1977. The city put up a plaque to mark the spot, and buried the King's scarf underneath in tribute. The neckwear was part of his outfit for that final show, along with a gold and white jumpsuit.

Alas, critics panned Elvis' performance as sloppy and lethargic. Seven weeks later, on August 16, he was found dead on his bathroom floor.

Monday, March 3, 2014

Sorry, blog. I abandoned you last year while I was off to other projects. But I'm back now, and what do you think has prompted the return? Donuts.

Or paczki (POANCH-kee), to be precise. They're the sugar-coated, jelly-filled Polish pastries that have become a much-gobbled, pre-Lent tradition.

Paczki are denser and eggier than typical donuts, and their deep-fried goodness has spawned an eponymous holiday. Paczki Day is celebrated the Thursday before Lent in Poland. The custom blended with local Mardi Gras traditions when it came to the US, and immigrants began marking it on Fat Tuesday.

In Chicago, which has one of the world's largest Polish populations, we honor both days. This means we munch paczki - in all of their cherry, strawberry, apricot, prune, custard, chocolate and raspberry-plumped incarnations - from Thursday through Tuesday. And then Lent begins, when many folks give up such sweet indulgences.

Top 3 bakeries to get sugarcoat your face?

* Delightful Pastries: When you dream of paczki, it is Delightful's pillowy dough-balls that pop up. Delightful will bake 20,000 paczki for the six-day "season," and they'll bake many of those with booze. The joy of chasing a whiskey-and-chocolate-custard donut with a vanilla bean-vodka donut cannot be overstated.

* Bennison's Bakery: Evanston's popular pastry shop makes a mean enough paczki that contestants want to shove trays of them down their gob for the Annual Paczki Eating Contest. Last year's champions look a little woozy in this video, but hey, they won $300.

* Bridgeport Bakery: The South Side stalwart is not kidding around, with heaps of cheesy, creamy, fruity paczki options for a butt-cheap 95¢ each.